Tempus Frigid
by quantumsilver
Summary: It's cold. Or is it?


**A/N :** _For Hester in the VAMB Secret Summer Exchange. Her request: A conversation between Endgame's Admiral Janeway and Timeless's older Chakotay. I don't care how you contrive their meeting (afterlife, parallel universe, Captain Braxton, Q, whatever; no particular details necessary), but they should have a very open and honest talk about why they did what they did, and especially how it was for each of them to lose the other and to have to go on alone. J/C of course. I confess I took perverse pleasure in NOT choosing one of the options she provided and finding one of my own. ;) Thanks, Froot, for the last minute beta._

 **Rating** _: R-ish_

 _Tempus Frigid_

* * *

Chakotay's mind is failing. He can't recall where he is or how he came to be here. The boxy chamber around him is glowing faint green, ominous and stark, but it's the cold that hits him most. Until he sees the figure emerging from the far corner and entering his space.

He almost can't believe it.

"Kathryn?"

But it's not his Kathryn. It's not the Kathryn whose lifeless body was lying crystallized on her own bridge moments ago, the woman he could barely stand to look at long enough to identify. This is some wiser, sadder version of her.

His soul devours the sight of her nonetheless. It's been far too long to deny himself that much.

She seems to sense his conflict. And even this strange mirage of her seems to know him to his damaged core.

"You've come to change history," she announces, saving so much time and awkward introduction. "To save us all from yourself and from me."

"Yes." Of all the people he can lie to, she is not one of them. No version of her is. But, "How do you know?"

How can even this wizened version of her know his most intimate secrets?

"We've been watching you, Chakotay." Her breath fans warmly across his brow, inking through the cold to chase the phantom chills from his bones. "We've heard everything."

"We?" Concentration shouldn't be so difficult. It's the cold. His biosuit may be failing. He can't bring himself to look away from her long enough to check it. Only her touch breathes warmth into his iced skin.

"Yes. All of us. We've been watching you since you arrived in this sector."

"You mean your souls? The souls of all the Voyagers?" Her hair is so white – as white as his is growing, yet her skin is remarkably lustrous despite the years of pain those blue eyes reveal. "Are you a ghost?" he wonders. "Is this your spirit?"

The smile she gives him is sadder than her words can atone for. "Not quite." Her restless eyes flick over his face, taking in his aging nuance before an oh-so-familiar expression settles between her brows. "God, I've missed you."

He nearly laughs. "I know the feeling." Even aged, the sight of her is as sweet as it is bitter. It's been a decade and a half since he has heard her uniquely-striking voice. It sounds like crackling fire on a cold winter's night. He places his hand on her weathered flesh, still lingering over his brow. "Why are you here? How is this possible?"

"Originally, I came for the same reason you did."

"To change history." Now that he thinks on it, it's not that difficult to imagine. If she felt justified, she'd rip apart the threads of time itself.

"Yes."

"For me." He knows nothing of her circumstances, less about her methods, yet it's buried as deep in his awareness as the rooting reflex must have been at birth.

Her steady gaze says it all. Still, she answers. "Of course for you. It's always been for you. Has there ever been any doubt about that, Chakotay?"

Hasn't there? Somehow with their gazes locked in this brutal cold air, any hard history to the contrary melts into the darkness hedging his field of vision.

But there are logistics at play here, and they tug at him.

"We both came to change the same history? Do I fail, then?" Panic smacks at him over the thought of it. They can't fail. They _can't_. She doesn't answer quickly enough and his lungs are seizing with rising fear. "Kathryn, I can't-"

"No, Chakotay." She's pressing him down, assuring him with the weight of her palms. "You've never failed me. I only wish I could say the same." Her head shakes, and memories darken her eyes. "All the times we spent fighting…every harsh word we exchanged. And when you died, all I wanted was to move heaven and hell just to hear your voice again, even if it was only berating me for being selfish and distant. I've lived without you for seven years. I won't do that again."

"I've lived without you for fifteen." Is his pain worse than hers? Or did some perverse part of him begin to relish in his agony?

"I'm here to change all of that. For both of us."

He wants so badly to believe. "How?"

It seems like an eternity passes with no answer. Or has any time passed at all? Looking at her, feeling her fingers across his face, it's as if time stands still between them. Maybe it never moved at all.

His thoughts are fuzzy. He feels dizzy but he can't feel his feet. "Kathryn?" Even his words are unsteady, woozy to his straining ears.

"Hmm?" She's still stroking his temple, hungrily staring into his eyes.

"I'm cold."

Sympathetic creases form between her brows. "I know. It won't last long. It's part of the assimilation process."

"The what?!"

He sees the tubes then, the wall around his memory crashing to rubble at his bare, nanotubed feet and he remembers.

The _Challenger_ trying to stop them. The cube appearing and blowing the _Challenger_ to bits. The Borg.

Harry's screams, his rage at being thwarted in their goal. Tess's white face as the careless drone snapped her neck to stop her from disabling his regenerative field. The pain of the tubes thrust into his neck.

"The Borg." It should be a gasp, a breathless choke. Instead, it's an impassive whisper. "They found us. How did they know?"

"I told them where to look." There's no remorse in her relentless gaze.

" _Why_?"

"I came back to fix things, just as you did. Only I failed. And that let the Borg get hold of technology they never should have had. They've become so powerful because of me that time no longer holds meaning for them. Soon, she'll be unstoppable. Humanity won't stand a chance."

He knows which "she".

"The Queen," Chakotay rasps, remembering her sly, mottled face on his viewscreen, her bald head tilting victory as her drones ripped him away from his target on the small shuttle he'd stolen in the Alpha Quadrant.

"She assimilated me," this older Janeway is explaining calmly, still stroking his face. "The virus I incubated kept her from assimilating every last part of my mind, but I'm afraid she got most of it – including the cure I didn't purge well enough from my memory banks. She took my identity. My knowledge. My technology and ship. _Voyager_. All I've been able to keep from her is this one tiny piece that she's slowly eroding."

"Kathryn." Now that the curtain of ignorance has been ripped from his awareness, the pain is incredible. It's nothing like Riley's collective and their passive grafts of his cortex so many years ago. Fire ants are disseminating in every cell he has and his only thought is, "If you're my future, and I don't save you now…"

"I'll never exist."

"Kathryn, no-"

He feels her fingers stroking his cold temple, and now he knows they aren't really there: she's in his mind. The Borg are in his mind.

He almost doesn't hear her added whisper, "And I'll never have had to live without you for so long."

Or he without her.

"Can you forgive me?"

The pain disappears into nothing and he is warm again.


End file.
